LUMPENPROLETARIAT—On today’s edition of Guns and Butter, host Bonnie Faulkner presented Part 1 of a series of interviews with Kevin Ryan on his book, Another Nineteen: Investigating Legitimate 9/11 Suspects. [1] By now, it’s quite well understood that the official 9/11 Commission Report was fatally flawed, depriving the American people of a sincere investigation into the crimes of 9/11, which have been used as continuing justification for endless war everywhere, in other words, current U.S. imperialism.

Kevin Ryan‘s book, Another Nineteen, provides a comprehensive study of the current body of research on the prime suspects, who deserve to be investigated for their apparent roles in carrying out the crimes of 9/11. Listen (and/or download) here. [2]

Messina

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[Working draft transcript of actual radio broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat, and Guns and Butter.]

KEVIN RYAN: “All through this time, part of this COG group, Continuity of Government, where they were practicing, essentially practicing to take over the United States government in a time of crisis.

“The only time that that plan was ever implemented was on 9/11 by Richard Clarke, one of their COG associates.

“So, they planned to take over the government all of these decades in and out of government and themselves.

“Then, they changed the plan in 1998 for it to be a response to a terror event, just exactly the kind of event as happened on September 11th. And, then, on September 11th, they implemented this plan.

“So, one thing about that plan is that, since then, we’ve learned that it may still be in effect. It, definitely, was still in effect the year after 9/11. And it continued, apparently, to be left in place to some degree. A lot of us are not sure what that means, to what extent. And the reason we don’t know what it means is that U.S. congressmen cannot even get information about it. Congressmen have asked, specifically, for information on the Continuity of Government plan and whether it’s still in effect, what it means, and they have been told that they cannot access that information.” (c. 1:45)

“Kevin Ryan began to investigate the crimes of September 11th, 2001 through his work as site manager of a division of Underwriters Laboratories, or UL. As a manager at Underwriters, he began in 2003 to question the World Trade Center investigation being conducted by UL and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and UL’s work to insure the fire resistance of the buildings.

“Ryan lost his position at UL for making his questions public.

“He was a founding member of the 9/11 Working Group of Bloomington and Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice. From 2009 to 2011, he volunteered his time as a board director at Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. He now serves as co-editor of the Journal of 9/11 Studies, He has authored several books and peer-reviewed scientific articles on the subject. His latest book is Another Nineteen: Investigating Legitimate 9/11 Suspects, released in 2013. (c. 3:05) [SNIP]”

[SNIP] (c. 5:50)

[On the mid-1970s grouping known as Family Jewels, the Safari Club, and the Bank of Commerce and Credit International] (c. 9:15)

[On Donald Rumsfeld]

[On the secretive Continuity of Government (COG) group, of which Donald Rumsfeld was a member]

[On Wirt Walker] (c. 20:57)

[On Dick Cheney’s work for a company called Bradley Woods] (c. 27:28)

“For example, most of the top secret clearances, given out by the United States today are just to people, who work for private companies. So, most of the intelligence work in the United States is contracted out. And that can be frightening to a lot of people, knowing, now, that the government is spying on all of us continuously.” (c. 27:45)

[On Frank Carlucci, the CEO of Carlyle Group, which was associated with the bin Laden and Bush families, or dynasties.]

“Frank Carlucci, former head of the investment firm, the Carlyle Group is the third major player mentioned among the other 19. What is his history? And what are some of the companies he has been affiliated with?”

KEVIN RYAN: “Well, Frank Carlucci is most well known for having been the CEO of the Carlyle Group is very interesting with regard to 9/11 because it was funded, in part, by the bin Laden family, who were investors in the Carlyle Group. And they were investors and partners with the Bush family“. The Bush family is very closely related to the Carlyle Group as well.

“So, Carlucci is also—he comes into play in the book because he is very closely related to Donald Rumsfeld. He was Donald Rumsfeld‘s roommate at Princeton in the ’50s. And, since then, he’s had a career as, basically, a covert operative. He worked, ostensibly, for the State Department, for the foreign service, as they said back in the day.

“And, at that time, it was clear that people working for the state department oftentimes might be these really covert operatives. And that’s exactly what he was. Carlucci was run out of several countries over his career. He was accused of plotting the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, who was the president of the Congo in 1961. He’s accused of overthrowing Salvador Allende in Chile. He’s accused of being involved in coups in several other countries and the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, and other things in Portugal and so forth. (c. 29:52)

“So, he’s really considered a specialist in dirty work. And that’s interesting because, you know, him being so powerful as this CEO of the Carlyle Group and having such connections to companies, that actually reported through him, one of them being BDM International. And BDM International is really strongly connected to 9/11 in that, again, his company Stratesec comes up because the chief operating officer and other employees from Stratesec came directly from Carlyle and Carlucci‘s BDM International. (c. 30:34)

“But Carlucci also has a history, that appears to, very strongly appears to, indicate he was involved in the Iran-Contra crimes. He ran a company called Sears World Trade. And this company was considered a spook operation, basically, by people who worked there. It was a company, that was found to be coordinating arms sales in the exact kinds of equipment, that the Iran-Contra crimes involved. And, essentially, newspapers like the Philadelphia Enquirer, basically, accused Sears World Trade and Carlucci of being involved in the Iran-Contra crimes. But he was never actually investigated for that.

“And one thing, that, again, crops up; these people keep interlacing and showing up. Barry McDaniel from Stratesec was the man in charge of distributing the weapons for the U.S. at that very time, at the time of the Iran-Contra crimes. And, so, he was an expert on logistics for armaments and explosives and so forth, which is why he partly comes up again in the book, later in his own chapter.” (c. 31:56)

“So, Carlucci was around the world. He spent time in countries around the world, mainly in Africa and the Middle East. And he did make a reputation—and in Central America and South America—as being this heavy covert operative. And [he] also was involved in the [inaudible, perhaps: fiasco], you know, very closely associated with Ted Shackley and the people, who were selling arms to Iran and so forth.

“So, there’s just an enormous amount of detail. But what we’re trying to do with this discussion and this book is to show that these suspects crop up in perfect positions in some cases to help effect the crimes of 9/11 and accomplish the things, that were not explained.”

BONNIE FAULKNER: “What is Frank Carlucci doing now?” (c. 32:55)

KEVIN RYAN: “So, Frank Carlucci is no longer the chairman of the Carlyle Group. He left that job and became a chairman emeritus for a few more years. But he’s associated with a lot of other companies now, including primarily the Frontier Group, where he works with Norman Augustine, who had worked for In-Q-Tel. And he has also been an advisory board member for G2 Satellite Solutions and for Nortel Networks. So, [he’s] into communications and satellite stuff.

“One thing other people have noted is he was also a primary advisor for Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential campaign. So, he is definitely a strong Republican. And he continues to be associated with businesses at a high level, but no longer with government.

“And, so, I believe he’s just, kind of, a guy, who tries to influence policy as a private citizen. And, so, I think that he really needs to be investigated for 9/11 and in terms of his connections to the Carlyle Group, to Barry McDaniel, to Donald Rumsfeld, and to the bin Laden family, in particular.” (c. 34:16)

BONNIE FAULKNER: “In your chapter on Frank Carlucci, you also go into the history of Richard Armitage“. Now, he was part, I remember, of the George W. Bush administration. What can you tell us about Armitage?”

KEVIN RYAN: “Yes, Armitage, he was a deputy secretary of state on 9/11. So, he was in a very powerful position with regard to people coming in and out of the country at that time. [3] And he had developed, along with his subordinate Grant Green, a visa express programme, that a number of the alleged 9/11 hijackers supposedly took advantage of. So, basically, this visa express programme is one, by which people didn’t even have to come in to the office in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to apply for their visa. They, basically, just fill out their paperwork. And a lot of these people got visas, or were told they got visas through that office and that programme. (c. 35:20)

“So, here’s Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, in charge of providing visas, basically, to these alleged attackers. But the history of Armitage is very strongly indicative that he is another covert operative. And he was responsible for doing drug trafficking, profiting from drug trafficking in Vietnam. And he was, allegedly, part of the Phoenixprogramme, which was an assassination programme in Vietnam, that killed over 20,000 people in terrible ways.

“And Armitage was also linked to Ted Shackley and the guys, who were part of this private network, that had been created in the ’70s. So, we talked about this private network being created, that the CIA was having off-the-book operations conducted by other countries.

“But, in the ’80s, that actually grew. Ted Shackley was part of the CIA and, then, was fired by [then-U.S. president] Jimmy Carter. And those people, along with him, that were fired in a, kind of, purging of the CIA during the Carter administration developed this private network even more strongly. And Armitage seemed to be very closely associated with those people.

“And, so, he was the protege of a man named Erich von Marbod, who was very closely linked to Shackley in the Sears World Trade network, that Frank Carlucci was running.

“So, this appeared to be the group, that was behind the Iran-Contra crimes and arms sales to Iran in the 1980s against U.S. law. And they also went back, together, to Vietnam and the Phoenix programme.

“And, so, for them to have shown up on 9/11 in these positions of power is interesting, partly, because, not only the Iran-Contra crimes and so forth, but the mujahideen was, we were told, where Al-Qaeda was born. The mujahideen are a group of Afghan Arabs in the 1980s, that the U.S. funded and trained. And this was during a time when Frank Carlucci was in and out of government in the Defense Department and the CIA. And Armitage was in and out of government in the 1980s as well. And they were, Armitage was, going to Afghanistan and meeting with these mujahideen-Al-Qaeda precursors.

“So, for him to have been in that position providing evidence of who was responsible for the crimes of 9/11 and also to have been so intimately linked to the funding and training of the mujahideen seems like a surprising coincidence.

“Richard Armitage was also present on the secure video teleconference on 9/11, that Richard Clarke was running from the White House Situation Room. So, he was part of the group, who failed to defend us on 9/11. He was a man, who provided, or ran a programme, that provided visas to the alleged hijackers. He had this history of covert operations and connections to the Al-Qaeda precursor group Mujahideen.

“He really is very strongly suggestive of somebody who knew a lot more about what was going on, just like Senator Max Cleland, who quit the 9/11 Commission, claimed. He claimed that the Commission was a scam, was a sham, that the government knew a lot more about this whole Al-Qaeda group long before 9/11 and were not being honest about it.” (c. 39:29)

[On who profited from 9/11]

[On Richard Clark, his role in ‘extraordinary rendition’ (i.e., torture) and his obstruction of attempts to capture Osama bin Laden]

[On Richard Clark’s role in obstructing humanitarian intervention during the Rwandan genocide]

[3] Richard Armitage is also associated with leaking the classified information exposing Valerie Plame Wilson as a secret agent for the CIA, triggering the Plame affair, although he has said it was inadvertent. Valerie Plame documented her experiences in her memoir, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, but now without meeting litigious resistance from the CIA. In 2010, Fair Game was adapted into a film starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn.